Friday, August 22, 2008

It's been an explosion of signed and spoken vocabulary up in here recently. And really, I think Erin owes almost all of her education to Rachel, Alex, Leah, and Hopkins from Signing Time. It is not unusual for the following conversation to take place:

"Father, would you be so kind as to operate the remote control device and cause the television set to display that Show of Shows, Signing Time, so that I may gaze fondly and deeply into Alex's wintry blue eyes and learn the signs for "napkin", "outside", and "love of my life forever"?"

"No, sweetie. We already watched Signing Time today. In fact, we watched it half an hour ago. How about some toys? Books? Are you hungry?"

"Sir, I believe you misunderstand me. I was not, in fact, making a request. And honestly, were you not so dense you would have seen that my frantic, insistent gestures belied my polite tone. You will operate the remote control device as directed, or I shall spend the next hour standing next to you trying to rip your left shift key off. Again."

"Here, kid. Do you want this Goldfish Cracker that I found on the floor? Go fetch."

"You are really quite exasperating. Please, do us both the kindness of not pretending that I am an idiot, or easily distracted by shiny crackers. I must visit with Alex immediately. I learned the sign for "prom" and I'm pretty sure that's what he has been secretly signing to me during the "Down on Leah's Farm" song. I must assure him that yes, I will be his date to the prom."

Every time Wito puts on a pair of my sunglasses, he launches into a 3-minute soliloquy imitating Rachel at the first of the "Box of Crayons" episode when she has the 3D-type glasses on. He literally knows the entire speech, word for word. IT IS FRIGHTENING.

Everything my kids learned about talking, they learned from Scooby Doo and my nonstop chatter. We don't get the program you mention here. The signing they learned came from books I worked from, and old school Blue's Clues. Trouble with that, though, was I spent a lot of time signing 'I love you," to Steve, and asking him to love me more. Eventually, my kids got really uncomfortable with the lessons, so we had to stop.

This is the parenthood people do not tell you about when you claim that your child will not watch more than 1 hour of TV per week...with you watching along his/her side. Yeah. Right. At least you appear to be realistic about it....after a while. LOL